Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Creating Memories

This one, I’m afraid, is for the skeptics in the
crowd. It deals with memory, how it is formed, how it is recalled, and what it
means to those of us who conduct investigations of long-ago events. The problem
is that most of what we believe about memory is about to be radically altered,
and if we pay attention to the on-going research into memory, it can only lead
to better information gathered about long-ago events.

First, let me say that I have known for a long
time that memory is often hazy and sometimes radically altered in the mere
process of remembering. In The Abduction
Enigma we looked at the phenomenon of “flash bulb” memory, that is, those
memories formed around some sort of important event. The old standby was “where
were you when you learned the president had been assassinated?” The thought was
that this sort of a memory was “burned” into the brain with greater intensity
than the mundane memories of day-to-day life and would be recalled with much
better accuracy.

But, according to Professor Ulric Neisser, who was
at Emory University in January 1986 when the space shuttle Challenger exploded,
this might not be true. He had a rare opportunity to study these flash bulb
memories because of the Challenger disaster. The day after the spacecraft blew-up,
he presented his first-year students with a short questionnaire that dealt with
what they were doing, where they were, and what they remembered. Three years
later he gave them the same questionnaire but asked one additional question. He
wanted to know how accurate they thought their memories were.

According to the results published by Neisser and
his graduate assistant Nicole Harsh, one quarter of the students didn’t have
any accurate memories of the event. In one case a student said that he had been
with his parents when he learned of the disaster, but the questionnaire
revealed he had been at school at the time.

More important was the reaction of the students
when confronted with the discrepancies. None disputed the accuracy of the
written documents but one student, when shown the questionnaire said, “I still
remember everything happening the way I told you. I can’t help it.” She was
defending her memories that were clearly an invention of her own mind.

The other 75% of the students remembered some,
most, or all of it accurately. Twenty-five percent remembered the disaster
accurately, so we can see that not all those involved were wrong and some can
accurately recall the “stored” events. It would be interesting to see how they
remembered the events today, after so many years have passed but that research
has not been attempted.

I say all this as introduction to a new study that
suggests memory is even more flawed than Neisser and Harsh suggested. According
to an online article in Wired (March
2012) by Jonah Lehrer entitled The
Forgetting Pill Erases Painful Memories, and available at:

Consider
the study of flashbulb memories, extremely vivid, detailed recollections.
Shortly after the September 11 attacks, a team of psychologists led by William
Hirst and Elizabeth Phelps surveyed several hundred subjects about their
memories of that awful day. The scientists then repeated the surveys, tracking
how the stories steadily decayed. At one year out, 37 percent of the details
had changed. By 2004 that number was approaching 50 percent. Some changes were
innocuous—the stories got tighter and the narratives more coherent—but other
adjustments involved a wholesale retrofit. Some people even altered where they
were when the towers fell. Over and over, the act of repeating the narrative
seemed to corrupt its content. The scientists aren’t sure about this mechanism,
and they have yet to analyze the data from the entire 10-year survey. But
Phelps expects it to reveal that many details will be make-believe. “What’s
most troubling, of course, is that these people have no idea their memories
have changed this much,” she says. “The strength of the emotion makes them convinced
it’s all true, even when it’s clearly not.”

Lehrer noted that most of what we thought we knew
about memory going back to the ancient Greeks is in error. Lehrer wrote, “Since the time of the ancient Greeks, people have imagined
memories to be a stable form of information that persists reliably. The
metaphors for this persistence have changed over time—Plato compared our
recollections to impressions in a wax tablet, and the idea of a biological hard
drive is popular today—but the basic model has not. Once a memory is formed, we
assume that it will stay the same. This, in fact, is why we trust our
recollections. They feel like indelible portraits of the past.”

But, according to the
research, this is all untrue. In studying memory, and the way it is stored in
the brain, it seems that the memory evolves as it is accessed. Each time
someone remembers something, it can be subtly altered. New information might be
included, old information edited out, and anything that a person has heard
about an event can be incorporated in the memory.

An example of this Lydia
Sleppy, the teletype operator (well, secretary at a New Mexico radio station KOAT
in 1947) who was typing the story of the UFO crash as told to her by Johnny
McBoyle. According to an article by Bobbi Ann Slate and Stan Friedman in the
Winter 1974 issue of Saga’s UFO Report,
“As
the woman began typing out the fantastic news item over the teletype to their
other two radio stations, a line appeared in the middle of her text, tapped in
from somewhere, with the official order: ‘Do not continue this transmission!’”

In The Roswell
Incident by Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore, the statement was, “Attention
Albuquerque: Do not transmit. Repeat do not transmit this message. Stop communication
immediately.”

She told me, in a
February 1993 interview, “I don’t know how much I had typed but I was typing what
John [McBoyle] dictated when the signal came on that this was the FBI and we
were to cease transmitting.”

In her signed affidavit
of September 1993, she said, “This is the FBI. You will immediately cease all
communication.”

While it can be seen
here that she clearly added the FBI to her story, what we don’t know is how it
was introduced. It could be it was something that she remembered, or it could
be that someone, asking about that communication wondered if it might not have
been the FBI, and she incorporated the FBI into her memory. Clearly the memory
has changed from the time it was first told and reported in 1974, until she talked
to me and signed the affidavit nearly twenty years later.

What all this new
research says to me is that memories, no more than a year old can be badly
flawed. Memories that are accessed time and again, as most of those for the
various “Roswell” witnesses have been, could easily be altered as they come
into contact with new information.

Jason Kellahin, who was
a reporter in 1947, told me, that they had been alerted to the UFO crash story
in the morning and drove to the Foster ranch. Brazel, his wife and young son
were there. Brazel took Kellahin and Robin Adair, the photographer into the
field.

There is nothing in the
record, anywhere, to suggest that Brazel was in the field with a balloon to be
photographed and when Kellahin was in that field, Brazel was already in
Roswell, in the hands of the military. These facts can all be documented by
various newspaper accounts and the testimony of nearly everyone else
interviewed.

Nearly everything that
Kellahin told me was wrong and I know this, not because he was reinforcing the
balloon explanation, but because the facts, established through documentation
from the time, prove that his story is untrue… but I should be clear on this, I
didn’t say he was lying. He seemed to have believed everything he was saying,
it was just contradicted by documentation.

And that is the key
here. How do we determine what is an accurate picture of the events of July
1947 and what is a combination of confabulation (that is, an unconscious
filling in of details of a story) and memory reconsolidation which is the way
memory is recreated in the brain?

The answer is use the
documentation available to corroborate the stories, use the testimony of others
who were involved as a way of testing the veracity of a story, and cross check
the information with what the witness has said before.

This new information,
from Wired, is a cautionary tale for us. While we know that many of the
witnesses were telling the truth, as they remember it, we must be aware that
they might not remember it correctly. This complicates the task of putting
together an accurate history of the Roswell case, but it also provides us with
information that will be helpful in determining what the truth is.

I have raised the points about Lydia Sleppy in the past. You have now confirmed them. Yes, someone planted the FBI angle in her mind, probably during the first interview she gave. This was most likely Stan Friedman, though we cannot say for sure.

As you say, her original quote (in the article you cited) changed drastically in later quotes. But another point is: how certain can we be that even the original quote is factually correct?

The same applies to witnesses Arthur Exon and Edwin Easley. I do not trust what they recalled and told you. The printed recordings of some of their phone conversations (as given in one of your books) is sufficient to warn any reader about accepting such testimony at face value.

Well, here is something frightening, now that I have quoted Jonah Lehrer. He has lost his job for a variety of reasons, including inventing quotes, or combining two statements made years apart into one.

I have no reason to doubt his explanations of the memory process, but it is cutting edge science.

cda wrote:I have raised the points about Lydia Sleppy in the past. You have now confirmed them.

In the four examples Kevin cited over 20 years, the core of her story DIDN'T change, only some of the details. In ALL versions, somebody ordered her to cease transmission of the story of the crashed UFO.

E.g., let us look at how her story was reported in Saga Magazine 1974, written by Stanton Friedman and Bobbi Alan Slate, who interviewed her in 1973. (http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2008/05/lydia-sleppy-1973-interview.html) Note how short it is and almost entirely paraphrased.

"In New Mexico a woman with a responsible position received a call from a station manager. He had been checking out reports of a UFO which had crashed in a field and was trying to track down the rumor that pieces of the object were supposedly stored in a local barn. In his excited call to the newsroom, the station manager verified the UFO crash report, and also claimed to have seen metallic pieces of the UFO being carried away to a waiting Air Force plane destined to Wright Patterson Air Force Base. As the woman was typing the fantastic news item over the teletype to their other two stations, a line appeared in the middle of her text, tapped in from somewhere, with the official order, 'Do not continue this transmission!'"

Now compare to her 1993 affidavit (http://www.roswellproof.com/sleppy.html):

...I received a call from John McBoyle, general manager and part-owner of KSWS Radio in Roswell, New Mexico, which was associated with KOAT.

...I asked Karl Lambertz, our program director and acting manager (KOAT owner and manager Merle Tucker was out of town), to be present in my office while I took the story from McBoyle and put it on the teletype. ...Mr. Lambertz stood behind me while I typed.

To the best of my recollection, McBoyle said, "There's been one of these flying saucer things crash down here north of Roswell." ... he [Brazel] had towed it in and stored it underneath a shelter on his property. ...McBoyle described it as "a big crumpled dishpan."

As I typed McBoyle's story, a bell rang on the teletype, indicating an interruption. The machine then printed a message something to this effect: "THIS IS THE FBI. YOU WILL IMMEDIATELY CEASE ALL COMMUNICATION." Whatever the precise words were, I definitely remember the message was from the FBI and that it directed me to stop transmitting.

...I never again discussed the matter with McBoyle, but the next day, he told Mr. Lambertz the military had isolated the area where the saucer was found and was keeping the press out. He told Lambertz he saw planes come in from Wright Field, Ohio, to take the thing away...

So in both versions 20 years apart, one short and paraphrased and one detailed in her own words:1. She received a call from a station manager about a crashed UFO that had been towed into a shelter.2. She was ordered to cease transmission, but in her own words wrote she doesn't remember exactly what was said, but did definitely remember the order being from the FBI. 3. She was told at some point about debris from the UFO being flown to Wright Field.

response to cda (part 2 of 2)Yes, someone planted the FBI angle in her mind,

Again cda treating mere speculation as undeniable fact because that's what he wants to believe. Kevin also noted that maybe she remembered this on her own later, or maybe she remembered it all along but neglected to mention it originally, or other possibilities, all of it speculation.

probably during the first interview she gave.

Yet, as we can see, this was NOT how Stanton Friedman reported it in 1974, though the report is also very short, thus could conceivably have been edited out.

This was most likely Stan Friedman, though we cannot say for sure.

Yes, of course, it just had to be the nefarious, Svengali-like Stan Friedman again. How many times have I heard cda make this this accusation against Friedman? If I had a dime for each time, I'd probably be a millionaire.

As you say, her original quote (in the article you cited) changed drastically in later quotes.

But the gist of what she said happened did NOT change, which is the more important point that is deliberately being ignored by CDA here. She was ordered to cease transmission of the crashed UFO story--NEVER changed. Also, she herself in her affidavit said she didn't remember the exact words of the transmission ordering her to stop. The only real significant change was no identity of the sender to the FBI, otherwise, same basic story.

But another point is: how certain can we be that even the original quote is factually correct?

So now you are accusing Sleppy of making the whole thing up, or less politely, that she is a liar? What is your evidence of that?

On the contrary, there are corroborating witnesses to Sleppy's story, including Lambertz and Tucker (whom Sleppy mentions in her affidavit), both of whom likewise remembered that McBoyle tried to phone in the story to Sleppy, Sleppy trying to get it out over the wire, and McBoyle talking about the flights to Wright Field. Even McBoyle partially admitted to investigating Brazel's story, though was vague about what exactly he saw. So I guess they are all liars as well, right CDA?

McBoyle never claimed to have seen any metallic, or in fact any kind of, pieces being loaded onto a plane. Neither could he have known where the plane was heading. (It was all top secret - remember?)

Sleppy in her original interview used the word 'crash' (unless Friedman inserted it for her). The term 'crash' was not used in any press report at the time - only the landing and recovery of a light instrument. So where did she learn of a 'crash'?

The FBI interrupt story is fiction. Also, there is nothing whatever to indicate the interrupt was from an "official" source as described. Nor could it be described as a "fantastic news item", unless the ET crash idea had somehow been planted in her mind during the intervening 27 years.

I suspect the original Sleppy tale is an amalgam of what she truly remembered (but with no date, not even a year) plus a bit of UFO familiarisation during the intervening years, plus some prodding and 'padding' from STF.

The embellished tale in later years derives from what she gleaned from books, films and further interviews.

The first quote and passage doesn't mention the FBI. In the second one, the FBI Is introduced.

This is exactly what CDA was suggesting.

Rudiak picks the portions of the message that he says are germane, ignoring the FBI angle. Why? Because that suits his purposes,

Dr. Rudiak apparently didn't read Kevin's piece when he accuses CDA of calling Sleppy a liar. It can never just be that someone was mistaken. Or that they confabulated. Which is of course what I would bet that CDA is suggesting.

This putting evil intentions against any skeptical thought probably doesn't get anyone closer to any kind of truth.

Let me point out here that the recent research cited by Jonah Lehrer suggested that memory was an evolving beast, which is what we (Russ Estes, Bill Cone, and I) suggested in The Abduction Enigma. We noted that 25% of Niesser's students had no accurate recollection of the Challenger disaster... but 25% did.

The new research suggested that memory can by confused, but it also suggested that some have good memories of events, even those from long ago.

Lydia Sleppy's story seems to have evolved, but I will note here that it has also been influenced by all those who interviewed her... That it could be something as benign as jogging her memory to the unintentional addition of details. I do not believe that we should reject what she said simply because the story evolved. The core elements remained the same.

As another example, I could have used Charles Moore, whose stories are in conflict with the record, and whose tale evolved over the years. The evidence is that the name, Mogul, was known to those who worked on it, and to Moore specifically, thanks to a letter of introduction written by Crary to James van Allen.

The real point here was to suggest we needed to be careful in our assessement of these stories, and to verify them with written records and the information gathered from other sources.

If you want to talk about someone who lied, then we have Sheridan Cavitt. I cn prove that he lied to us and that he might have been less than candid with Weaver.

Geez, I don't why you people have to act this way... Kurt (whoever the hell you are), if you looked at The Abduction Enignma, you'd see that we cited her work... and I have been well aware of her work for a long time and own a couple of her books...

Chuck - The fact that he has trouble with citing his sources, and that he made up quotes, does not mean that he was in error in the report on memory... His report is verified by other sources...

Very interesting topic, Kevin. There's a related cognitive problem that fascinates me. When we are exposed to a false version of an event and embrace it as truth, later, when presented with evidence, our brains resist accepting it. The embedded lie is stronger than the truth.

The remarks about Lydia Sleppy apply also to Hughie Green, as per his story as told to Bill Moore in THE ROSWELL INCIDENT.

It shows another memory failure. Perhaps not that serious, but it is there nonetheless.

You will recall how Green had originally written to FLYING SAUCER REVIEW back in 1955 recalling how he was driving through NM some years earlier when he heard the radio broadcasts of a disc that had 'crashed' in the desert. This was written long before Roswell gained publicity in the literature. Green later told Moore: "I am certain that one of the news broadcasts commented on the fact that the sheriff and his men were proceeding towards the field of the crash within sight of the wreckage".

However the broadcasts did NOT use the word 'crash', any more than the newspapers did, and neither mentioned the sheriff going out to the field.

So why did Green associate the event with a crash, and why was the sheriff involved in "going out to the field"? The most likely reason is that he had heard in subsequent years about other crashes, such as Scully (also in NM) and associated the event he heard on the radio with one of these. Hence his testimony to Moore about the (assumed) Roswell 'crash'. Green, as with Marcel and Sleppy, had no memory of the year. And the sheriff tale? Your guess is as good as mine; perhaps he misheard the broadcast, or was the idea planted into his head at his first interview?

So Green had narrated a slightly false, and exaggerated, version of his tale to FSR, and again to Moore many years later. Was he influenced by intervening UFO news and events? Undoubtedly.

You may consider this fairly trivial, but it supports your main thesis. It is the sort of added 'extra' or embellishment that can occur to anyone who is relating events of the past or even the present.

Does anyone know what the control groups were for the memory research?

There were control groups, right?

What were the criteria for "accurate/inaccurate memory"? What were the suppositions (for example: memories age or grow old or faint due to time passing and age. Is that a given? And, if not, how do you explain the exceptions?)

What I would like to know is the profile of those with high accurate memory (however this research scored it).

I think you are overreacting here. The study doesn't eliminate all memory, only suggests way that it can be colored and that some people do change the memories over time. This study, and the interviews of Lydia Sleppy do not prove that she was confabulating... It only suggests that we verify the stories with other information. Under your criterion, we now eliminate the tales of Charles Moore for the very same reasons. It cuts both ways.

Don -

Did you follow the link to the original story? There are additional links that that should answer your questions.

I have seen that you have provided some evidence that Moore had heard the code name "Mogul" even though he thought he had not heard it until much later.

I think this falls into that realm. He may well have heard (or read the letter you located) the word and then forgotten it. It doesn't mean that he is lying.

And truth be told you seem to place much more importance upon this that it deserves but I agree that you present a good case for the (very minor) point.

You do yourself a disservice when you dismiss what Moore contributed by calling his testimony "tales". Moore ALWAYS qualified his work as a possible solution not a final solution.

The sad thing is that there is no way to respond or discuss the supposed problems with the Mogul explanation because the participants (really just one main participant) on your side are unwilling to work in a professional way to answer questions and seek truth.

I'm sure you might say the same thing about the skeptical side (with some authority) but I wonder if you desire a a real discussion?

I use the Moore example because this is the sort of thing the debunkers grab to prove that a witness is a liar. Moore said that he didn't learn the project name until Robert Todd told him in 1992.He said that the name was so highly classified that no one on the project knew it. Documentation proves that this is untrue.

What do we make of it? I believe that Moore knew the name and had forgotten it until Todd told him. I think he exaggerated when he suggested the name was so highly classified. Are either of these points fatal errors? Nope. And they really aren't that important except for what they tell us about both sides of this issue.

Are there other points of dispute? Yes. Did Moore change his tune in other places? Certainly. He originally thanked me for supplying the winds aloft data he used but as time passed he began to ignore this, saying that the data were available to anyone who asked. Why, he even asked my for additional charts as he began his work... and then, he decided that to acknowledge that contribution somehow undermined his calculations. Why not just say he got the charts from me rather than invent this tale of someone else getting them for him?

I chose the word, "tales" very carefully for what it implied. I chose it because it suggested something about the evolving nature of his story... something that the debunkers overlooked or ignored.

The point is that the debunkers dismiss Lydia Sleppy because her tale seemed to evolve and therefore could be dismissed. They dismiss Sleppy because, as both Karl Pflock and Kal Korff noted (Pflock actually citing Korff as a source), you couldn't interrupt the outgoing transmission... unless of course you took some sort of action. There was a switch that needed to be flipped if a bell sounded suggesting an incoming message.

All well and good, except had Pflock understood the affidavit that he publised in his book, he would have seen that Sleppy made mention of this. In the interview conducted by Stan Friedman, she mentioned it. In other words, this reason for dismissing her was invalid... and it was made over a trival point.

So we come back to Moore. Do his errors create enough concern about his veracity that we can dismiss him completely? No. It is just one more item in a long list of concerns that we all need to understand.

The main point at issue in regards to Moore, of course, is whether one of the Mogul flights provides a plausible solution for the debris found on the Foster ranch.

As I see it, Dr. Rudiaks objections to Moore's flight estimations are not robust. I have seen at least two different skeptics try to engage him about this in detail (Tim Printy and Dave Thomas) only to see his increasingly angry non responses end the discussion without addressing the issues raised.

If he has a good case, it should be possible to defend it.

The opening sentence in your article above betrays something, I think, that perhaps you ought to consider: why would you be "afraid" about some new discovery that tends to support the skeptical side?

Kevin:Sleppy's tale is false, or at least grossly embellished, for 3 reasons:

1. She claims the FBI "definitely" interrupted her message. (see affidavit). This is nonsense. 2. She claims McBoyle told her he went out to the site. (ROSWELL INCIDENT, p.24)3. She claims McBoyle also told her that "little men were on board". (same book & page).

These are not trivial mistakes if we wish to accept her testimony. They are either confabulations or memory lapses. Notice that in her affidavit there is no mention of the "little men". Why not? Was it a little too 'over the top' to put in an affidavit?

Her story is in fact a hotch-potch, nothing else. She had been interviewed too many times, got thoroughly confused and began to imagine things. No year or date was given, until Moore or Friedman gave her one (and got it wrong in the process!).

In the end why should we accept ANYTHING she said at face value?

Frank Joyce's teletypes show no FBI involvement at all. Someone told Sleppy about the genuine FBI teletype from Dallas and this caused her to add the fiction that the FBI had interrupted her outgoing message. That is my conclusion.

I do not deny Charles Moore also got confused at times. But his mistakes and imaginings are far less serious than those of your pro-ET witnesses, who are, after all, hinting or insisting that an ET craft crashed. No such thing was known to science and the military at the time, and still isn't.

You'll have to discuss David's motivations with him. I will not speculate about them.

I said, "afraid" meaning that I expected howls of protest from the other side of the fence, not that the information was frightening. I get attacked from all points because I will not embrace everything about UFOs that is said or published. You have read too much into that statement.

CDA -

You say FBI involvement is "nonsense." Why? Because the FBI wouldn't do something like that? This was 1947... a time when the FBI did tap phones without warrant and not too long after Hoover had issued a "shoot on sight" order for Dillinger.

Nonsense because they didn't have the technical capability? They only had to tap the line into ABC headquarters in LA and not all the radio stations in the country.

Nonsense because you don't believe that there has been alien visitation and therefore anything like this must be nonsense?

In my copy of the book the quotes you mention are on page 14 (which I mention only because I wondered if you were using a paperback edition rather than hardback, which I have.)

This is in dialogue that is not attributed to anyone other than McBoyle. We don't know if this information came from Sleppy or if Moore and Berlitz created it based on what they had learned from other sources as well. I see no attribution for that information, so the assumption that it came from Sleppy is just that, an assumption.

Her affidavit mentions nothing about "little men" but does mention the "crushed dishpan" description.

We can always return to the initial published report of what she said, before Marcel mentioned the crash, before the books and articles were published, and see the central core of her tale.

Reject, if you must, some of the later embellishments, but there is a central core... just as there is a central core to Moore's memories.

You last sentence reveals your true thoughts and it seems pointless to engage in discussion if you are not willing to look at the evidence.

The reason the FBI involvement is nonsense has nothing to do with ETs. Rather it is for several reasons:

1. Kal Korff has established that the FBI had no link to Albuquerque at the time, thus no ability to tap in to Sleppy's machine. OK I know you are not a pal of KK, but that is what he has found out.

2. Why should Sleppy's message have been interrupted by the FBI when Frank Joyce's numerous similar messages were not?

3. How on earth did the FBI know what Sleppy was going to type anyway? She had only begun her message (even this is uncertain since she has no record of what she typed before being stopped).

4. Her original story to Friedman does NOT mention the FBI. Are you claiming that anyone's teletype or phone call, that day, telling about the Roswell crash would be intercepted by the FBI? Preposterous.

I maintain that the only reason she brought the FBI in was that some investigator (M or F?) told her about the Dallas teletype and thus put the idea into her head.

Lance wrote: (part 1 of 2)As I see it, Dr. Rudiaks objections to Moore's flight estimations are not robust.

Well here we go again! So you mean 100/12.1 really does equal 350? Or 852/2.8=100? Those are "real" Moore numbers. But never mind. I'll try to be more "robust" next time in my criticisms.

Probably by "robust", Lance means his attempt to change the subject from Moore's fraudulent claim that he had shown the winds were "exactly right" (whereas he could only make it "exactly right" by cheating with his numbers) to Lance's revisionist argument that there are too many unknowns. This is known as spin, since Lance is deliberately ducking the real issue that Moore DID cheat.

Now notice below how he accuses ME of avoiding the actual issues, more disingenuous behavior by Lance.

Incidentally, unlike ankle biters like Lance, I have also done the actual work of looking at alternate possibilities, such as rotating wind directions and changing velocities. The point I have made is that you have to make EXTREME assumptions about the weather data and known Mogul balloon flight data, well outside of the actual data available, to make a trajectory to the Foster Ranch possible WITHOUT explicitly cheating like Moore did. The problem is, such possibilities are very unlikely, like winning poker with a royal flush instead of two pair. "Possible" is not the same as "probable".

I have seen at least two different skeptics try to engage him about this in detail (Tim Printy and Dave Thomas) only to see his increasingly angry non responses end the discussion without addressing the issues raised.

This is just flagrant lying by Lance or total ignorance of what really happened. Besides writing up rebuttals in exhaustive detail on my website, I engaged in very lengthy responses to both Printy and Thomas on UFO Updates concerning Moores trajectory calculation and his phony math.

Also with Printy on Moore's alterations of the real Mogul Flight #5 trajectory to make it seem like the flight didn't pass near Roswell base. It was Printy and Thomas who both fled from debate after I mathematically gutted them on the actual issues.

Like Lance, they also tried to change the subject from what Moore actually did and tried to make excuses for his fraud. Like Lance, e.g., Thomas tried to argue that Moore was "qualitatively correct", basically that the winds suggested the hypothetical balloon flight went in generally the right direction (instead of the opposite direction), never mind the details that it probably never would have come down anywhere near the Foster Ranch. And that's why Moore had to cheat to begin with, because the wind data DIDN'T support the hypothesis.

Also both Printy and Thomas simply reproduced Moore's WRONG calculation, then claimed since they could reproduce it, it suddenly became right. Never did they address the the specifics of why it was wrong. (I bet the crooks at Enron who cooked their books wish they had Lance, Printy, and Thomas propagandizing for them.)

The debates with Printy and Thomas ran thousands of lines. The technical details are much too complicated to go into here. Anyone interested can go look it up on the UFO Updates archives. If necessary, I'll link to a bunch of them to refute Lance's lie of "nonresponses" to Printy or Thomas in debate about Moore.

E.g., here is where I addressed Printy's nonsense defending how Moore had changed the Mogul Flight #5 trajectory map after Moore claimed he was reproducing it "without change":

part 2 of 2 response to Lance:I also submitted a letter of rebuttal to Dave Thomas' article in the Skeptical Inquirer where he personally attacked me in his attempts to defend Moore. The editor of SI then was Kendrick Frazier, who also lived in Albuquerque and one of Thomas' good buddies. Naturally the letter was never acknowledged, much less published by Frazier, though any reputable science magazine would have published such a letter of rebuttal as a matter of course.

More details here, along with my unpublished rebuttal letter that was censored by Frazier:

http://www.roswellproof.com/Skeptical_Inquirer_response.html

When I announced that I was drafting the letter of rebuttal on UFO Updates, Dave Thomas suddenly appeared on Updates for the first and last time ever, and like Lance, tried to spin the issues.

http://ufoupdateslist.com/2003/jul/m18-003.shtml

Turns out I merely had "disagreements" with Moore on how to model. How does this explain 100/12.1 = 350? Mere "disagreement" people. Forget the real math; Thomas certainly did.

My lengthy rebuttal to Thomas that Lance claims I never had:

http://ufoupdateslist.com/2003/jul/m30-003.shtml

http://ufoupdateslist.com/2003/jul/m30-004.shtml

But according to Lance, this was a "nonresponse". Anybody else going to the links think this was a "nonresponse"? My "nonresponse" ran over 20 pages, single-spaced. The reality is it was Dave Thomas who refused to debate further. He will see no rebuttal from him to the detailed points I raised.

Thomas knows he can't win debating the actual issues, which, like Lance, is why he refuses to debate them. Really, how can one debate that 100/12.1 = 350? Better to change the subject and claim that one was right all along. That's the hypocritical debunking way.

Kal Korff? Seriously? Korff didn't find out anything. He made it up. The footnote said that he talked to someone in the Dallas office. Not who he talked to... just some unidentified source.

He also confused the testimony of Edwin Easley with that of Sheridan Cavitt, suggested he had talked to Easley's doctor about the progression of his cancer when the source he cited was Easley's eye doctor, said that the family said he was confused when that statement was made by the daughter of Curry Holden.

And you cite Korff... whose book is filled with misinformation, half-truths, distortions, misrepresentations and fabrications. His Roswell research is a joke, unreliable and useless. And you cite him.

Joyce's messages were not initiated by Joyce but received by him... and didn't give away anything. That is a significant difference.

I have already pointed out, repeatedly, that her initial interviews do not say anything about the FBI. This came later and probably was the result of her learning about the FBI telex. So, we know that the FBI probably didn't interrupt the message, which doesn't mean that someone didn't...

Teletypes had dedicated lines which means tapping into them was not the same as tapping into telephones. It was easier... you just had to have a teletype machine to type out the message.

I mentioned Dillinger only to point out that in that era the FBI operated as if it was above the law. By what stretch of the imagination did Hoover had the right to issue the "shoot on sight" order. Just suggests a mindset in the FBI...

Which brings us back to Korff. Let us say for the sake of argument that the FBI did tape the teletype in 1947... then some guy calls the FBI office in Dallas to ask about it. No one there was in the FBI in 1947 so they don't know what might, or might not have been done. Any record of this would have been removed... But let us say that one of the guys did know. Do you really think he would tell some guy on the telephone that the FBI had violated the law?

Remember this. If Korff told me that the sun rose in the morning and set at night, I would check it myself... This make believe colonel, teenaged builder of an atom bomb, this international journalist, is not a source that I would quote about anything. If he says his name is Kal Korff you better check because he has said that it is really Kalisreal...

CDA wrote:The reason the FBI involvement is nonsense has nothing to do with ETs. Rather it is for several reasons: 1. Kal Korff has established that the FBI had no link to Albuquerque at the time, thus no ability to tap in to Sleppy's machine. OK I know you are not a pal of KK, but that is what he has found out.

While it is true the FBI didn't officially have a field office in Albuquerque until late 1949, as the Albuquerque bureau explains on their own website, they had an extensive presence in New Mexico in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s operating out of their El Paso office:

http://www.fbi.gov/albuquerque/about-us/history/history

This explains that they opened their Albuquerque office because of the great expansion in their presence following WWII, particularly regarding protecting atomic secrets and Los Alamos:

"With the end of World War II and onset of the Cold War, Bureau operations in New Mexico became even more important. The 1946 Atomic Energy Act greatly increased the number of investigations done in and around the Los Alamos, New Mexico area because of its role in the American nuclear program. By the summer of 1949, the case load had grown so much that more than half of the El Paso Division’s investigations were in New Mexico... [After opening Albuquerque office in 1949] Within two months, the Division had more than 500 Atomic Energy Act cases under investigation in a joint effort with the Atomic Energy Commission to ensure the security of American nuclear facilities."

Various secret communications surveillance in the U.S. following WWII is now pretty well documented (read James Bamford in "The Puzzle Palace"), such as the USCIB (United States Communications Information Board) formed in 1946, which included the FBI as a member as well as the Central Intelligence Group (headed then by none other than Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, who in July 1947 was also in charge of the AAF at the Pentagon during Roswell).

Also the illegal Operation Shamrock put into place in 1945, utilizing the three major U.S. teletype giants, that continued for another 30 years. This surveillance was supposed to be limited to foreign communications, but necessarily involved intercepting U.S. citizens' telex communications going abroad or coming into this country.

But, of course, the FBI couldn't possibly have been monitoring telex communications in Albuquerque in 1947, even if to protect atomic secrets of nearby Los Alamos and even closer Kirtland AFB/Sandia Labs in Albuquerque where nukes were assembled, stored, and flown out--to Roswell AAF, the atomic bomber base--because CDA simply can't believe it. So it must be so.

2. Why should Sleppy's message have been interrupted by the FBI when Frank Joyce's numerous similar messages were not?

Sleppy could transmit; Joyce could not. He had to send out the press release by Western Union in town. Sleppy was also a different transmission system, sending to ABC News. Joyce was a UP stringer. He was able to read INCOMING telexes from UP, but not send them. The press release wasn't his private story but the official word from the base, another reason it wouldn't be cut off.

Now interestingly, when I spoke to Joyce back in 2001, his memory was that there WAS a several hour interruption in the incoming UP telexes. I don't know what to make of this other than the mystery of why everybody agrees the base press release was given to the four Roswell media outlets around noon, yet the press release didn't go out over the wire until nearly 2:30.

Part 2 of 2 response to cda:3. How on earth did the FBI know what Sleppy was going to type anyway?

Didn't need to know necessarily. Could have been routine monitoring of the telex lines in Albuquerque in case atomic secrets were being spilled. The point would have been to keep ANY sensitive information from going out.

Of course, it also didn't need to be the FBI monitoring the lines. We know of other cases where military counterintelligence (CIC and AFOSI) posed as FBI in order to obtain information. One example was the William Rhodes case in Phoenix from the day before.

She had only begun her message (even this is uncertain since she has no record of what she typed before being stopped).

Her core story over all the years was that McBoyle called in saying he had a big story about a crashed flying saucer found by a rancher and he wanted it sent directly to ABC News in LA. That I would guess would have been the first information she sent out. That alone would be enough to trigger an "oh-oh" if the line was being monitored.

Incidentally, part of McBoyle's story was seeing the "crushed dishpan" object that was about 25 across. Now interestingly, Gen. Ramey also brought this figure up, time about 1 hour after the press release went out, saying the box-kite-like object in his office would have been about 25' in diameter if reconstructed (Washington Post story,July 9). Interesting "coincidence", no?

A possibility is that someone in military intelligence was well aware of McBoyle and Sleppy, and had Ramey bring up 25' as another possible cover story. Later, instead of the "box-kite" being 25' across (which was preposterous for a radar target), it became the balloon that held it up was 20-25' in diameter (e.g., see FBI Dallas telegram of July 8).

It is also interesting that ABC news radio later that evening also brought up the 20-25' figure, but attributing it to "other army officials" immediately after giving Ramey's "box-kite" description:

http://www.roswellproof.com/ABC_News_July8.html

Incidentally, this is currently the only known surviving taped news broadcast about Roswell. That's why when CDA made his other all-knowing pronouncements about how Hughie Green couldn't possibly have heard certain details in radio broadcasts that he remembered hearing, I had to laugh. How could CDA possibly know what the radio broadcasts might or might not say if out of the many thousands all over the country, only one survived? CDA has remarkable psychic powers.

4. Her original story to Friedman does NOT mention the FBI. Are you claiming that anyone's teletype or phone call, that day, telling about the Roswell crash would be intercepted by the FBI? Preposterous. ...Tapping phones is a bit different from breaking into teletypes.

Telex is much easier to tap and monitor than phone lines, since there are so few of them. Telex also utilized phone lines. It wasn't a completely different system.

Also, what on earth has the shooting of Dillinger got to do with it?!

Read the FBI Albquerque's own website history page. The FBI was all over New Mexico chasing criminals long before Roswell, and then following WWII, took on a very heavy presence in the Los Alamos area because of the A-bomb and protecting atomic secrets. That's why they opened the Albuquerque branch to begin with.

Yet you're acting like the FBI would have had no presence in N.M. for any reason. Speaking of "preposterous"!

Kevin wrote:Which brings us back to Korff. Let us say for the sake of argument that the FBI did tape the teletype in 1947... then some guy calls the FBI office in Dallas to ask about it. No one there was in the FBI in 1947 so they don't know what might, or might not have been done. Any record of this would have been removed... But let us say that one of the guys did know. Do you really think he would tell some guy on the telephone that the FBI had violated the law?

This sort of reminds me of how non-responsive and paranoid the FBI was when I tried to find out how the time stamps on their telexes were handled back in 1947, specifically trying to nail down the time of transmittal of the FBI telex on Roswell out of Dallas on July 8.

When I called some FBI office back in Washington, I got a very hostile and paranoid response to this question, like it was a super top secret, national security matter whether a 6:17 telex from Dallas to Washington referred to Dallas time or Washington time. "We do not provide any information to the public on our methods, sir!" or words to that effect.

I also tried an agent at the San Francisco branch. "Why would you want to know that?" Probably didn't know the answer himself.

And this had nothing at all to do with anything possibly illegal, like wiretapping without a warrant. It was just a totally innocent, harmless historical inquiry about procedure 50+ years before. Yet I was treated like a Soviet spy stealing atomic secrets.

Remember this. If Korff told me that the sun rose in the morning and set at night, I would check it myself... This make believe colonel, teenaged builder of an atom bomb, this international journalist, is not a source that I would quote about anything. If he says his name is Kal Korff you better check because he has said that it is really Kalisreal.

Yes, anybody who cites Korff as a reliable source has total mush for brains. However, as my previous post indicates, when I checked the history of the Albuquerque FBI office, he was right they didn't have a branch office there in 1947. But they had an extensive presence in New Mexico at the time, as their own website indicates, particularly guarding atomic secrets and Los Alamos. Monitoring telex lines I could easily see being part of their counterintelligence operations against possible spying.

Yeah, that's te behavior that I was referring to for Dr. Rudiak: everyone is a lying stupid scumbag except for himself.

His rebuttals are so busy insulting the other party that it's hard to tell if any information is contained therein. Additionally, he devines the intentions of the other party using the same paranoid conspiracy nut methodology...this must be true because my fevered brain imagined it!

The 100/12.1 = 350 and the 852/2.8 = 100 are not Moore's figures. Instead they were derived from his tables by those who wish to denigrate them. Moore admitted the proofs were unchecked by him before appearing in print. The false figures above arise because of rapid changes in the slope of the curve, which means a straight line graph (as assumed by his detractors) is obviously wrong plus and a likely misprint of one value: 52,000 instead of 51,000. The latter would smooth things quite a bit.

Having said that, I agree Moore's tabular values look dubious in several places. These were arrived at by converting meters to feet, but he admitted to likely misprints and errors. Moore himself never said how the rise rate was worked out at the sharp changes parts of the curve.

Kevin & DR:

"Joyce's messages were not initiated by Joyce but received by him... and didn't give away anything. That is a significant difference."

Why should we trust anything Lydia Sleppy said about her teletype? If Kevin agrees that the FBI intervention was probably fiction (as he does), he has killed the very heart of her testimony, since she has no memory of what she typed and has sworn that her message was "definitely" cut off by the FBI, or possibly some other official body.

Obviously Joyce received his messages because the FBI did NOT interfere in his case. As to whether they said anything of significance, that is a matter of opinion.

Are we to suppose Sleppy's message was to tell the world that an ET craft had crashed? And the FBI was determined that she would not be allowed to do this? Just more hallmarks of conspiracy theory, once again. But then that has always been the very heart of Roswell, hasn't it?

Anyway, we seem to have digressed from a discussion about memories to such topics as numerical calculations and the death of a Mr Dillinger!

I have read all the replies to this blogpost by Kevin with interest and consideration....

...and as an outsider, I can offer a few suggestions to posters here, so that they seem to the real world to be 'normal'.....

Sebastian Clouth: this is NOT a promotional opportunity for your wanker business...

cda: I perceive that you may be a Brit; if so, perhaps you might leave your Mum's basement long enough to realize that you sods are hosting the 2012 Olympics???(P.S. cda: ...you are citing Kal Korffffff...REALLY!!!???)

David Rudiak: Your capacity for hard work and your technical expertise are noted.... (One little suggestion: Limit your posts to ONE per article; i.e., if your are unable to provide a cogent summary, then you DON'T really understand the material.)

In part because she was telling this story long before the Roswell case was revised by Stanton Friedman after he also stumbled across Jesse Marcel. Friedman sought her out after getting a tip via her son, who told yet another investigator that his mother had been telling the story for years to family and friends.

Also in part because it has corroboration from other principles involved, such as her bosses and reporter McBoyle, who phoned the story into her to begin with.

In part, because part of McBoyle's story, the 25 feet in diameter object, also was being repeated by the likes of Gen. Ramey and other military spokespeople back in 1947, one of those many Roswell "coincidences".

In part because it has also come to light (e.g., journalist James Bamford in "The Puzzle Palace", such as the illegal Operation Shamrock) that there was monitoring of teletype lines following WWII because of fears of Soviet espionage. The FBI was definitely involved in such monitoring and had a heavy presence in the Albuquerque area at the time protecting atomic secrets, thus lending additional credibility to Sleppy's story. Thus some agency could very conceivably have been monitoring the teletype lines in Albuquerque.

Sleppy wouldn't be able to tell who ordered her to cease transmission. They could have identified themselves as the FBI, as she later "recalled", but that doesn't prove they were the FBI. But, again, this is a detail, not the main thrust of her story.

If Kevin agrees that the FBI intervention was probably fiction (as he does),

Kevin DIDN'T say that. He said the FBI involvement wasn't part of her original story, not that it couldn't be true (thus an illustration of how stories can evolve, just like CDA's debunkery continues to evolve).

he has killed the very heart of her testimony,

More exaggeration and misrepresentation by CDA. Her story from day one was ALWAYS that her teletype reporting McBoyle's story was cut off by someone. Whether it was the FBI or someone else is a detail, not the "heart of her testimony".

The other "heart of her testimony" was that McBoyle phoned in the story for her to transmit concerning a crashed flying saucer found by a rancher, McBoyle also telling her it a was a big story.

since she has no memory of what she typed

More bunk. She said she was typing in McBoyle's story, which (again since CDA seems so deliberately clueless) was about the crashed flying saucer found by the rancher. How far into the story she managed to get is unclear.

and has sworn that her message was "definitely" cut off by the FBI, or possibly some other official body.

ALWAYS a part of her story, whether FBI or not.

Obviously Joyce received his messages because the FBI did NOT interfere in his case.

Joyce wasn't transmitting, wasn't capable of transmitting. The only story he sent out, the PREAPPROVED base press release (not his own story), required him to go to Western Union.

CDA is comparing apples and oranges and coming up with a bananas conclusion.

As I mentioned before, Joyce told me he DID remember the incoming teletype lines going dead for several hours. Exactly when this was supposed to have happened was always unclear. His surviving UP printouts cover about the first hour after the press release first went out over AP around 2:30 p.m., but there is obviously missing material from pre-2:30 mentioning another UP bulletin.

My speculation is that if Joyce was remembering correctly, the teletype lines, for some reason, were killed between noon, when the Roswell media received the press release, and 2:30 when the story finally went out.

Part 1 of 3 rebuttal to CDA:After Kevin mentioned Mogul engineer Charles Moore as just another witness whose testimony has “evolved” over the years (thus the debunker charge that witness testimony cannot be trusted slices both ways), CDA decided to lamely defend Moore again, this time against my charges (also Brad Spark's) that Moore hoaxed a Mogul trajectory to try to prove his fictitious Flight #4 definitely landed at the Foster Ranch.

I AGAIN am going to go into detail here (GROAN), because CDA seemingly can't restrain himself from making a multitude of outrageously false claims about this. Just remember, I'm not the one who brought this up—CDA did. If you don't want to read the following lengthy rebuttal, don't read it.

CDA wrote in Moore's “defense”:

The 100/12.1 = 350 and the 852/2.8 = 100 are not Moore's figures. Instead they were derived from his tables by those who wish to denigrate them.

Nothing but flagrant lying and spin. Let's start by looking at the actual data for Moore's rise and fall rates. Here is the table made by Moore to do his "Flight #4" trajectory:

http://www.roswellproof.com/Flight4_Table5.html

Evil people like me point out that a lot of the numbers in the table are grossly wrong. CDA insinuates that we are doing this strictly to “denigrate” Moore, insinuating that what we say has no merit. But look at the numbers for yourself.

E.g., look at the first three columns and first two rows. He has the balloons going from altitude 4069' to 4921' (a rise of 4921-4069 = 852 ft.) in a time of 2.8' - 0.0' = 2.8 min.

How do you "derive" the CORRECT rise rate? Simply by dividing change in altitude by change in time: 852'/2.8' = 304 ft/min. That's all there is to it.

Moore did exactly the same “derivations” for the real Flight #5 in another table:

http://www.roswellproof.com/Flight5_Table2.html

E.g., in this table at the beginning, he has Flight #5 rising from 4069' to 12000' in 10 minutes for a rise rate of (12000-4069)/10 = 793 ft/min. You can go through this entire table and he is dead on in every rise/fall rate he calculates (CDA's “derives”).

But not remotely so for "Flight #4". In our example first rise rate, note HIS table value is only 100 ft/min instead of the 304 ft/min that he should have calculated. Go through the table and you will find all sorts of awful mistakes, quite unlike for his Flight #5 table.

But your math doesn't count, according to CDA, since your rise/fall numbers are "derived", "not Moore's figures". How else is one supposed to get the correct rise/fall rates other than to "derive" them, i.e., calculate them just like Moore did for his Flight #5 table?

Part 2 of 3 rebuttal to CDA:Moore admitted the proofs were unchecked by him before appearing in print. The false figures above arise because of rapid changes in the slope of the curve, which means a straight line graph (as assumed by his detractors) is obviously wrong.

More CDA BS. If you look at Moore's Flight #4 table, it is MOORE, not his "detractors" who is assuming a "straight line graph" for his rise with 15 straight 600 ft/min rise rates listed.

But when you calculate the real rise rates using Moore's own table, they aren't constant like this at all. Although many are close, they should be dead on, like Moore was for his Flight #5 table. And some are way off. I did a bar graph illustrating what his table says the values should be vs. what Moore really put:

http://www.roswellproof.com/files/flt4riseratecompare.gif

So we are not dealing with just one or two "mistakes", but a slew of them. Half his values are way, way off, and even the remainder are mostly in error that can't be attributed to simple round off error.

plus and a likely misprint of one value: 52,000 instead of 51,000. The latter would smooth things quite a bit.

More propaganda from CDA. Even changing his table to try make one error not so bad ("smoothing things quite a bit", but still grossly in error) doesn't make it correct. And it doesn't fix all the other outrageously bad simple math "mistakes". CDA, of course, doesn't bring those inconvenient math facts up.

Go to the table for "Flight #4" where the altitude goes from 49213' to 52000' then 52100' in time 79.2' to 83.4' to 95.5'. The calculated (CDA's "derived") rise rates for the two intervals are 2787'/4.2' = 664 and 100'/12.1' = 8.3, whereas Moore's table has 450 and 350!!! Neither one is remotely correct. Of course, in CDA SpinLand, pointing this out with (correct) "derived" rise rates is done only to "denigrate" Moore. That's called shooting the messenger.

Now let's see what happens if we allow CDA to change the numbers, i.e., substituting 51000' for 52000'. Then the (correct) "derived" rise rates become 1787'/4.2' = 425 (instead of Moore's table 450) and 1100'/12.1 = 91 (instead of Moore's 350). This CDA spins as "smoothing things a bit".

What does everybody else think? Yes the numbers are now “better”, but I call them still grossly WRONG. The second number is still off by nearly 300%. This is an "improvement" over the previous 4000+% error, but really, who does CDA think he is fooling with his own lying about the numbers and attempts to "smooth things a bit" for Moore?

Having said that, I agree Moore's tabular values look dubious in several places.

So after first attacking me as somehow "deriving" numbers merely to "denigrate" Moore (insinuating that my "derived" numbers were somehow deliberately misleading or false), now CDA is admitting Moore's table values are indeed "dubious", but (still spinning) only in "several" places, suggesting that there are only a few such instances.

Well let's do another math reality check. Check my graph again (or calculate yourself from Moore's table). Out of 40 rise/fall rates, 12 are off by 50% or more (hideously wrong), 17 are off by 20% or more, 20 by 5% or more, the rest by only a few percent, but with only 1 out of 40 dead on, quite unlike his “derived” rates for Flight #5, which are ALL dead on.

Part 3 of 3 rebuttal to CDAThese were arrived at by converting meters to feet,

More total confabulation by CDA. Even if this were true, what does it have to do with anything? That Moore was incapable of converting meters to feet?

but he admitted to likely misprints and errors.

Again admitting that I am right and Moore's table is full of “mistakes”, but without the integrity to just come out and admit it. Why are the “misprints and errors” only in his Flight #4 table, not the Flight #5 one?

Moore himself never said how the rise rate was worked out at the sharp changes parts of the curve.

More baloney. Moore didn't need to explicitly say, since he already did it elsewhere in his own “derived” numbers, as in his recreated Flight #5 table: Rise/fall rate = altitude interval divided by time interval. It's incredibly simple and obvious math. But CDA tries to make it sound like String Theory.

My final comment is that Moore's phony, outrageously bad rise/fall rates are simply the most mathematically obvious of many more serious “mistakes” in the way he treated his own data and have a much bigger effect in determining the actual trajectory. But CDA can't even admit to the totally unambiguous and multitudinous simple math errors in the rise/fall rates, instead offering up all sorts of preposterous excuses and theories as to why they are wrong and then accusing someone like me of nothing but Moore character assassination for pointing out that 100/12.1 does not equal 350, nor does CDA's revised 1100/12.1 equal 350.

Debunkers like Dave Thomas and Tim Printy have also tried to defend Moore, and despite Lance's own false claims that I never engaged them in debate, I actually pounded them to death with the math, because no way, no how, does 100/12.1 equal 350, or 852/2.8 = 100, or 662/.4 = 900, etc., etc., etc.

What we have here is Moore not even acting as a witness, but as a deliberate, calculating hoaxer trying to promote his nonexistent Flight #4 as the solution to the Roswell case. So what does that say about the credibility as a mere witness? For me, if he wasn't trying to promote a Mogul solution, he should be treated just like any other witness with possible fuzzy, evolving memories, probably trying to recall to the best of his ability.

I did not mention John Wilkes Booth, Zachery Smith or Frank Kaufmann because none of them had been gunned down in the street on the orders of J. Edgar Hoover. The point you seem to be unable to grasp is that I was suggesting that in that era the FBI operated above the law. Dillinger was just one example.

Lance -

I remove the insults to me. I see no reason to allow them to stand since it is my blog... If we drift into territory that is offensive, one calling another a pediphile for example. My blog, my rules and if you don't like it, you are welcome to go elsewhere.

"...quite unlike his “derived” rates for Flight #5, which are ALL dead on."

Oh no they are NOT all "dead on". Very few are dead on, although most are fairly close. Ditto for flight #6.

DR needs to understand that you do NOT work out rates of change in a graph whose slope is changing by simply dividing two adjacent tabular values by the time interval. This method is only valid when the graph is a straight line or a close approximation to it.

But apples + oranges still equals bananas where ET visits are concerned.

Anyway, we have now got two Roswell crashes that day according to some ageing USAF informant in the 'Huffington Post'. Funny, but I thought there were 4 Roswell crash sites anyway, plus the fifth on the San Augustin plains. STF 'established' this long ago, didn't he?

I wrote (comparing Charles Moore's Flight #4 table numbers to the real Flight #5):"...quite unlike his “derived” rates for Flight #5, which are ALL dead on."

CDA (as usual) disingenuously wrote:Oh no they are NOT all "dead on". Very few are dead on, although most are fairly close. Ditto for flight #6.

To know what CDA and I are discussing, here is Moore's table for Flight #5 where he calculates the rise/fall rates:

http://www.roswellproof.com/Flight5_Table2.html

How are the rates calculated? Very simple: divide altitude interval by time interval. E.g., the first interval has the balloon rising 7931 feet in 10 minutes giving an AVERAGE rise rate of 793.1 ft/min for that interval, which Moore rounds off to 793. As far as I'm concerned, that is "dead on", dropping the decimals not mattering. By that criterion, all of Moore's numbers are "dead on".

Well now I have to take that back going through each one to see if CDA isn't blowing smoke again. ALL are "dead on" except one, so CDA "got me". The fourth one should have been 660 instead of Moore's 650, so about 1.6% error.

But everything else is 0% error (except for roundoff), quite unlike Moore's table for "Flight #4" where 39 out of 40 numbers aren't even within round-off error, a full third being at least 50% in error, 40% being at least 20% in error, just absolutely horrifically bad math.

So what do we make of CDA's statement that “very few are dead on, although most are fairly close”? What it sounds like to me is he is trying to make it sound like Moore's calculated rise/fall rate accuracy for Flight #4 is very similar for his Flight #5 table in accuracy, when it clearly is NOT, not remotely close.

What is the word one uses one someone is clearly playing fast and loose with the truth? It's that dreaded “L” word that I sometimes use when people are obviously prevaricating through their teeth. But I dare not use the “L” word to describe what CDA is again doing, because an “L” contributor here then hysterically shrieks that I'm guilty of “childish name calling” for pointing out that somebody is obviously “L”ing again.

DR needs to understand that you do NOT work out rates of change in a graph whose slope is changing by simply dividing two adjacent tabular values by the time interval. This method is only valid when the graph is a straight line or a close approximation to it.

CDA needs to understand that DR easily sees through his BS, again CDA trying to make a simple calculation sound like String Theory. Moore calculated rise/fall rates for Flight #5 exactly he way I said he did, dividing EACH altitude interval by EACH time interval. (None of CDA's nonsense about how you need to consider whether the graph is a straight line or not). Moore's numbers are indeed “dead on” for Flight #5, except for one small error, but curiously can't shoot straight when it comes to his table for Flight #4.

So why can't Moore do the same simple calculation correctly for his “Flight #4”? Well then he couldn't get his fake balloon “exactly” to the Foster Ranch like he bragged back in 1997. And his many fake rise-fall rates are actually among the least important of his deceitful math manipulations that he used to get “Flight #4” “exactly” to the Foster Ranch. They are just the easiest to understand, because anybody (but a debunker) knows that 100/12.1 does not equal 350.

I was being sympathetic to DR when I said that Moore's tables 2 and 3 are both NOT "dead on". They are reasonably good but neither are "dead on", and anyone familiar with graphs should see this. (And no, it is much more than a matter of 793.1 as opposed to 793).

Why on earth we are arguing this matter on a UFO forum I do not know but it shows, once again, how easy it is to divert from the main topic.

Briefly, I'll state the matter thus: If you have three or more tabular values x1, x2, x3 etc in a table, plotted against three or more time values t1, t2, t3 etc, you CANNOT just take the value (x2 - x1)/ (t2 - t1) and say that is the slope of the curve UNLESS the curve is a straight line or close enough to a straight line.

In Moore's tables 2 and 3 (flights #5 and #6) neither is a straight line. Plot them and see! Moore's values for the rise rate are therefore wrong in BOTH tables, i.e. certainly not "dead on", although they are a fairly good approximation.

What I am saying is that Moore is not only wrong in his table 5 (flight #4) but also in his other two flights, although to a lesser extent.

The values are not "dead on" because he was working with approximations anyway and saw no point in trying to make his rise rates more accurate. Perfectly logical but causing varying errors in the slopes.

DR needs to learn:

1. Good manners (as Lance says)2. A bit of numerical math when it comes to dealing with curves that have constantly changing slopes.

Yes, I concede: Moore was wrong in all 3 graphs, but more so in the third than in the other two. But he never claimed accuracy in any of them.

But DR's criticisms are based on his own faulty methodology.

This debate is getting out of hand and way off topic.

Anyway, I am now taking a vacation of at least 3 days, away from home. Need to cool off.

All I see is your usual doubletalk and obfuscation of the real issues here. You are trying to confuse the reader by saying Moore was wrong everywhere by using AVERAGE rise/fall rates for an altitude interval and time interval instead of instantaneous rates, like this was a precisely defined calculus problem.

This is garbage. The real world balloon data is by nature crude because they recorded altitudes minutes or dozens of minutes apart (this is true whether it was a Mogul flight or an ordinary weather balloon flight). This is perfectly adequate in determining flight trajectories, wind velocities, rise/fall rates, etc. This ain't brain surgery buddy.

The real point is that Moore had absolutely no problem ACCURATELY calculating those crude AVERAGE rise/fall rates per interval when it came to the real balloon flights, like Flight #5. They are indeed "dead on" for AVERAGE rise/fall rates, simply the altitude interval divided by the time interval. With one exception, there is 0% error in these AVERAGE rates (ignoring simple decimal round-off error).

But when it came to Moore's fictitious Flight #4, Moore can't compute an accurate rise/fall rate to save his life. You deliberately mislead the readers into thinking there was hardly any difference between the tables, but as I keep pointing out, and you deliberately ignore, many of these values are just HUGELY wrong, fully a third, e.g., off by 50% or more. AVERAGE vs. your refined instantaneous rates have nothing to do with it.

Moore can get one set of AVERAGE rates right, but not the other. Why is that? Well, I'll never know for sure, but as I pointed out on my website:

Another way to look at the problem is that Moore used the wrong elapsed times to reach a given altitude (thus the rise rates when calculated with the wrong times would disagree with the printed rise rates). The table can be easily recalculated using Moore's given rise rates and altitudes to find new "corrected" elapsed times. From this, a new trajectory can be calculated that Moore should have gotten had he stuck to his printed rise rates. If one uses Moore's faulty push-back method of calculating the trajectory, the final crash site then lies about 5 miles south of Moore's site obtained with his altered rise rates or times.

It's difficult to understand why Moore would do this. One can speculate that the reason Moore secretly changed many of his times/rise rates was to "fine-tune" his trajectory. Five miles off still wasn't considered good enough, so Moore perhaps "tweaked" the elapsed times/rise rates to make sure the balloons ended up exactly where Moore wanted it. When Moore said he had "calculated" a trajectory "exactly" to the Foster Ranch he meant "exactly."

In other words, possibly one more math cheat Moore used to get his Flight #4 "exactly" to the ranch.

I don't care how much smoke you blow, what curve-fitting equation you use, ain't no way, no how that you can fix all those rotten numbers like 100/12.1 = 350, 852/2.8 = 100, etc., etc., etc.

The as usual witty and urbane Lance wrote:Most of the nutty raving above is dealt with here:

http://home.comcast.net/~tprinty/UFO/rudiak.htm

Of course conspiracy theorists are always busy so new stuff is concocted every day.

I ask anyone to check the link and see who is being reasonable and who is being a childish screaming windbag,, unwilling to accept that someone called him on his errors?

This is from the guy who insults EVERYBODY he disagrees with as anybody who follows Lance knows full well. Kevin a million times has warned him to tone it down.

As to Lance's worship of anything Tim Printy, it is obvious that Lance doesn't know the first thing about the real issues, can't evaluate arguments critically, just believes anything Printy says because Printy is anti-Rudiak on everything.

I don't have time here to refute every false argument and misrepresentation that Printy has on that web page. (If needed, I will post multiple links to UFO Updates debates where I took Printy apart on all of his rubbish supposedly disproving what I said about Moore and his hoaxing, thousands of lines if you want to read it.)

But here is an easy one to check out for yourself. For readers here who know how to read maps and can think for themselves, look at out how Printy tries to pretend that Charles Moore didn't alter the original Flight #5 Mogul trajectory plot, all of which had the effect of distancing Flight #5 from Roswell base. This was after Moore wrote on his own altered plot that he was reproducing the trajectory "without change" and also making statements on various occasions that the base wouldn't have known about Project Mogul (thus supposedly misidentified a crashed Mogul as a flying saucer).

But the reality is, Flight #5 passed only about 4 miles south of the base on June 5, 1947 and lingered in base airspace on the order of an hour or more, kind of hard to miss by control tower operators, pilots, plane spotters, weather people, etc. Also it was being followed by a chase plane circling underneath, which would have to explain its presence to the base. Even Moore admitted to that in a debate with Brad Sparks mediated by the late Karl Pflock.

The original Mogul plot compared to Moore's "without change" revisions can be viewed here:

http://www.roswellproof.com/Flight4and5_changes.html

And a more detailed discussion, including the debate with Sparks is here (it was actually Sparks who first pointed out to me the changes Moore made):

http://www.roswellproof.com/flight4_addendums.html#anchor_3600

All I ask is that readers look at the ACTUAL map data for themselves, unfiltered through Printy's mangling of the facts, and arrive at your own conclusion. If you can read a map, the conclusion should be obvious: Moore altered the "without change" map, and his three alterations distanced Flight #5 from Roswell base. A picture is worth a million misleading words by the likes of Printy or Lance.

“After 15 months, 50% of the recollections were highly accurate, and only 11% contained major errors or distortions. After 32 months, only 29% of the recollections were highly accurate, and more than 40% contained major distortions.”

“Interestingly not only were the participants in the 32-month group more likely to produce a major distortion than to indicate they did not remember, but they also answered more of the nine questions than the 15-month group. That is, they tended to provide answers instead of acknowledging that they did not remember.”

“…individuals with distorted recollections often expressed high confidence in what they remembered.”

However, “For the group tested after 15 months, rehearsal, interest, and opinion strength all correlated significantly with the accuracy of the recollections. After 32 months, only emotion correlated significantly with accuracy scores.” Unfortunately, the authors were unable to say if the emotion in any way caused the retention of accurate memories.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40063493

To help understand how these mistakes are made, I encourage people to read up on source-monitoring errors (especially those of you interested in alien abduction memories). We get information from many different sources but, once it’s all in our head, we can easily lose track of where it came from.

For instance, psychologists who study advertising effects have shown subjects ads of products that don’t exist, but later some subjects report having tried the faux product. This is called the false-experience effect.

Don't! It's a cesspool of unhinged conspiracy nuts. Most of the commentors site Sitchin, birthers and the Bible -- even if the topic is bicycle pumps.

> Yes, of course, it just had to be the nefarious, Svengali-like Stan Friedman again.

Please, that is just useless rhetoric. As some have noted already, there are many ways to influence a witness without acting maliciously like Svengali (who did horrible things no one is accusing Mr. Friedman of doing anyway!).